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Imagine waking up to find your bank account has more money than it should. Like $120,000 more. What should you do? Report it to the bank.
What should you not do? Spend it.
Photo Credit: Google Maps
To Montoursville couple Robert and Tiffany Williams, maybe the extra $120k in their bank account seemed like a miracle instead of an error.
Or maybe they just thought no one would notice if they spent it. So they went on a shopping spree. Their preference: Vehicles, and lots of them. They spent over $100,000 on an all-terrain vehicle, a camper van, a car trailer, and a race car.
To be fair, they also helped out a few friends in need, giving out upwards of $15,000 in cash, and paid down some bills.
Too good to be true? Yes, definitely.
It just so happened that this all was an error by bank BB&T, and the couple is now facing felony and theft charges. But it seems this duo wasn’t all that oblivious to the error. The Williams’ later admitted to knowing the money didn’t belong to them. Before the bank teller error, they had just over $1,200 in their account.
Photo Credit: Pictures of Money, CC BY 2.0
It took BB&T three weeks to catch the mistake, at which time the bank reversed the entry and deposited it into the right account. This severely over-drafted the Williams’ account.
“The bank notified Tiffany Williams and told her she and her husband were ‘responsible for the return of all the funds,’” said state Trooper Aaron Brown.
Tiffany Williams, told bank officials, “She no longer had the funds because she had already paid off bills. She told the bank her husband had spent a great portion of the funds and purchased a four-wheeler. She said she would speak to her husband and attempt to construct a repayment agreement with the bank.”
After several attempts at reaching Tiffany and Robert, BB&T moved forward with filing charges. Both were “…arraigned Tuesday before District Judge Gary Whiteman on felony charges of theft and receiving stolen property, and released on $25,000 bail each.”
Moral of the story: don’t steal. Pretty simple.
